The knot with not

… What do you suppose is the use of a child without any meaning? Even a joke should have some meaning—and a child’s more important than a joke, I hope. You couldn’t deny that, even if you tried with both hands.’

‘I don’t deny things with my hands,’ Alice objected.

‘Nobody said you did,’ said the Red Queen. ‘I said you couldn’t if you tried.’

Moving into sending mode. (It turned out a bit longer than I intended).

Phew, it is not my brain
The source of the problem with not, is not in your brain. In fact, the brain tries to make sense of “not”. Which it “cannot”. “Not” operates at two levels at the same time: on the content or logical level and on the relationship or causal level. Example: “a chair” is content and “sitting on a chair” is the relationship. You can make anything into “a chair”, by “sitting on it”. But you cannot “sit on” the word “chair”. In using “not” one creates a paradox, because you cannot deny the relationship in a communicated message. The quote from Lewis Carroll says it all: “you cannot deny things with your hands”. Even if you tried.